Carmel firefighters attack the fire that killed four members of the Sullivan family and destroyed a Wyndham Lane home on May 1, 2012. / Frank Becerra Jr./The Journal News

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CARMEL — As his father burst into his bedroom in the darkness shouting “Fire!” Thomas Sullivan Jr. thought he was having a bad dream.

“Fire, fire! Get out, get out!” his father yelled in the early hours of May 1, 2012.

“He whips open the door, and he’s just shouting at me,” Sullivan told Carmel police. His father headed to a bedroom shared by his two younger sisters, and Sullivan quickly realized, “This ain’t a dream.”

“When I got up out of my bed, I breathed in and I knew there was smoke,” he said. “I just knew it. I felt it. It was burning.”

During a five-hour interview with Carmel police at the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office the day after the fire, Sullivan recounted his escape from the burning home. He was the sole survivor of the blaze that killed his father, Larchmont police Capt. Thomas Sullivan Sr., 48; his mother, Donna Sullivan, 47; and his sisters, Meaghan, 17, and Mairead, 15, at their Wyndham Lane home.

The Journal News obtained a copy of a transcript of the interview from the Sheriff’s Office after appealing a partial denial last year of a Freedom of Information Law request for records on the case.

Sullivan recalled how he felt smoke stinging his eyes in his bedroom, so he shut them and instinctively got “down on all fours.”

On the floor, it “seemed like I was breathing in totally clean air,” he said. He crawled down the hall and down the stairs, having debated going into a bedroom, but fearing he wouldn’t make it out. Downstairs, where the ceilings were higher, he could stand and wasn’t overwhelmed by smoke. Through a large glass pane on the front door, he saw flames engulfing the porch.

“I think I tried like opening the door and just automatically just burned,” he said. He turned, screaming a warning to his father. “Don’t use the front door! Don’t use the front door! Go out the side!”

Sullivan backed away, running through the family room, kitchen and laundry room and into the garage as he searched for a way out. The garage door was his best hope. He pushed a button on the wall, and it opened. The electricity had not yet gone out.

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“I ran clear, I came out the garage, and the first thing, I didn’t see anyone,” he said. “It was scary. I was expecting to see like maybe one of my sisters, two of my sisters, something. I didn’t see anyone outside. So, I, I didn’t know what to do.”

Seeking help

Dressed only in boxers, Sullivan ran to his next-door neighbor’s house.

“I’m just pounding on the door screaming, like trying to get their attention,” he said. He heard a man screaming. It was another neighbor. Sullivan ran to him, telling him to call 911. The neighbor said, “I did already.” He asked Sullivan, “Where’s your family?”

Sullivan replied, “They’re still in there.” That’s when Sullivan heard more screaming. He ran toward the sounds. His sister Meaghan was leaning out the window, “just screaming, screaming.” Flames were rising to the roof. All he could do was yell.

“I told her: ‘OK! Just get down! Just shut up! Just get down and just crawl out!”

Sullivan, then 20, gave investigators no further description of the horrific scene. All four of his family members died of asphyxiation from breathing smoke and carbon monoxide. His sisters were students at Carmel High School.

Sullivan, who burned his hand on the door handle and scraped his knees from crawling, never heard any of his family’s four dogs barking or the smoke detectors go off. As the fire raged, neighbors brought him clothes and food. Minutes later, EMS workers arrived and Sullivan reluctantly agreed to go to Danbury (Conn.) Hospital to be evaluated for possible smoke inhalation.

Investigators ruled five weeks later that the fire was an accident, likely caused by a cigarette ember Sullivan said he flicked into mulch by the front porch at 8 p.m. April 30. The mulch, they said, smoldered for hours before flames spread to the plastic lattice and wood porch.

The day before

The blaze broke out just before 2 a.m., less than four hours after Sullivan went to sleep before his other family members after a fairly typical day. He was watching the Mets game with his parents and sister Mairead in the family room before going to bed, exhausted from his job at the Larchmont Highway Department, where he picked up trash and mowed lawns.

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“I said good night to all of them, and I know, I know at that point my sister was down there because I remember, like, in the past I was thinking like some of the last things I said to them and stuff,” he said. “And I know for a fact that I said good night to my mom, dad and my little sister.”

Sullivan didn’t specify where Meaghan was when he went to sleep, but she spent that afternoon hanging out in her bedroom, and he thought she was still awake when he went to bed.

His father, who was off from work that week, was working on a car in the driveway that afternoon with Mairead. He said his mother returned home about 6:30 or 7 p.m. from her job in admissions at Arms Acres, a Carmel-based treatment center. Sullivan made mozzarella sticks for dinner, while his other family members “grabbed” their own meals, which wasn’t unusual.

He told investigators he fell asleep pretty quickly that night, and the next thing he remembered was his father bursting into his bedroom. Sullivan, who was attending Dutchess Community College at the time, has since moved to California, friends said, and declined to comment when reached by phone last month.

During the interview with investigators, he expressed gratitude for the support from his extended family.

“It’s amazing,” he said. “Like in times of need, how they support you… it’s nothing you realize until something major like this happens.”